Reality(TM) 2048: Watching Big Mother
Reality(TM) 2048, by Derek Cressman, is a finalist in the Foreword Indies Book of the Year awards for science fiction, a First Horizon finalist for new novelists from the Eric Hoffer Book Awards, and an award finalist in both the science fiction and visionary categories in the 2019 American Fiction Awards.
An inquisitive woman goes through the dreary motions of life in a not too distant Los Angeles that has lost its vivacity. Vera escapes her hollow world through a deep search within herself to avoid a deluge of commercial information. She gradually develops the capacity for independent thought, falls in love, and must then avoid a seductive technology that could render her catatonic.This post-Orwellian dystopia explores how the truth drowns in a sea of alternative facts, verified information, and sensationalized politics. Instead of deprivation, censorship and doublespeak, we see a future where corporations and political elites fuel vapid consumerism and control individual thought through a barrage of advertising, trademarked language, and addictive entertainment streamed directly into the brain.Reality(TM) 2048 challenges the tenants of Ayn Rand, globalism, and judicial activism with characters who confront the murky boundaries between rationality and emotion, objective truth and lived experience. Vera's journey explores how socially manufactured identity filters what each of us can hear and comprehend and asks whether democratic society can exist when we no longer believe that anything is true. It's where reality TV could take us if we cannot find ways to reconnect with the real world and with one another.
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"A potent and sobering wake-up call." -- Kirkus Reviews
"The book's monolithic system of business and political corruption has impacts that cannot be ignored or avoided. What promises to be a story of personal transformation turns into a chilling warning about how corporate greed kills individual empowerment." -- Foreword Clarion Reviews
"Derek Cressman's RealityTM 2048 is a novel of great consequence, one from which I will not easily escape. The ultimate question Cressman asks is what happens if people know they are misled but they just don't care? As one character says, 'A fact is a fact. They have nothing to do with reality.' Especially when Reality is trademarked. " -- Sue Wilson, director of the award winning media reform documentary Broadcast Blues and founder of the Media Action Center
"RealityTM 2048 may be a dystopian thriller, but it shouldn't be limited to these audiences. Social Issues and technology fiction readers will find plenty of shock and awe in Cressman's revealing portent of a possible social form of attack on a democratic, free, truly choice-driven life." -- D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Reviews
"Cressman has a nicely hone prose style suitable for telling his story and especially for elaborating very fluidly the many technological, broadcast, and social media advances (and distractions) that distinguish the story's future world." -- The Booklife Prize
"RealityTM 2048 is a thoughtful take on a plausible future. With a generous nod to George Orwell, Derek Cressman weaves a suspenseful tale set in a world where no one believes the news, and no one cares." -- Mal Warwick, Publisher, Mal Warwick on Books and author of Hell on Earth: What We Can Learn from Dystopian Fiction
